TermGIFforge 👾

A hosted micro‑SaaS (HTTP API) to render terminal GIFs on demand. Give it a list of VHS commands → get back a GIF you can embed in docs, READMEs, or share anywhere.

No library to install. No client SDK required. Just call the endpoint (GET with commands=[...] or POST JSON) and use the returned image.

Use this API to present your CLI workflows as polished, shareable GIFs.

Table of Contents

• TermGIFforge 👾
  • Table of Contents
  • Instructions
  • How to run
    • Locally w/ docker 🐳
  • Troubleshooting
  • Contributing
  • Support
  • References

Instructions

TermGIFforge uses the VHS to generate the GIFs, here you'll find the command references to generate your own GIFs. Try:

• Having the commands on query param, like:
  • http://terminalgifapi.com/api/v1/gif?commands=["Type \"echo 'The Magic Happens Here'\"","Enter","Sleep 2s"]
  • http://terminalgifapi.com/api/v1/gif?commands=[ "Set FontSize 50", "Set TypingSpeed 75ms", "Type \"echo \"", "Set TypingSpeed 500ms", "Type \"'YEY\"", "Set TypingSpeed 75ms", "Type \"!!!'\"", "Sleep 100ms", "Enter", "Sleep 2s"]
  • http://terminalgifapi.com/api/v1/gif?commands=["Type \"echo 'Welcome to VHS!'\"","Enter","Type \"ls\"","Sleep 100ms","Enter","Sleep 2s"]
• Sometimes using the commands on the query param can be tricky with the encoding. For these cases, you can have the commands on the requesst body, like:
  • curl -X POST http://terminalgifapi.com/api/v1/gif --header 'content-type: application/json' --data '{"commands": ["Type \"echo '\''Welcome t00 V0HS!'\''\"","Enter","Type \"ls\"","Sleep 100ms","Enter","Sleep 2s"]}'
• Using the GIF id on the route param:
  • http://terminalgifapi/api/v1/gif/33613662-3838-3532-3532-313636613838

How to run

Locally w/ docker 🐳

Then, from browser or Bruno, open:

• http://localhost:9001/api/v1/gif?commands=["Type \"echo Hi\"","Enter","Sleep 2s"]

Troubleshooting

• How to encode the URL to use in the HTML tag?
  • Simply enter your URL to the browser and it'll parse it to you.
  • If you're using some special characters, like "#", use the urlencoder.org for the query params and it should work.
• How to force image (cache) update in README.rst on GitHub?
  • You have to delete the cache by run curl -X PURGE {url of cached badge image} and refresh the page (reference).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or fork the repo and submit pull requests to enhance the project.

Support

References

• https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs

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Made in Brazil